Water Resources, Land Exploration, and Population Health in the Arid Area -- the Case of Tarim River Basin in Xinjiang of China

Leiwen Jiang, Brown University and Peking University
Yufen Tong, Xinjiang University
Zhijie Zhao, Peking University
Tianhong Li, Peking University

Water source is at the root of any lives and development in the arid areas like Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. As one of the driest place in the world, melting glaciers is the exclusive water source of Tarim Basin in Xinjiang. Population growth--in particular in-migration--greatly changes the ecological conditions of Tarim River Basin in the past 2500 years. Our research aims at studying the population growth, land cultivation, and its interactions with water volume, quality, and length of Tarim River in Tarim Basin for the period of 1950 to 2000. Time series data on population changes and economic development, water volume and quality (from water stations), land use and land cover changes (aero-photographic data, remote sensing data), prevalence of morbidity relevant to water quality, death rate, are collected to study the relationship between these factors, by constructing a system dynamic model.